An ideal news reporter
tells facts and details. Yet, there are times when reporters place
too many details in stories, especially in the area of suicide
reporting. For Shelby Rowe, the Oklahoma Department of Mental
Health and Substance Abuse Services' suicide prevention program
manager, there are ways to report on suicide without inflicting
greater harm to affected families and community members.

This was the topic that
Rowe, a Chickasaw Nation member, brought to the RISE program
offices with her presentation "Speaking on Suicide: Tips for Safe
and Successful Messaging," on January 10, 2018. At least 16
Anadarko area concerned citizens attended the event.

"A lot of it comes in the
language used," Rowe said about suicide reporting missteps. "In
reporting on suicide, it being as simple as if someone makes a
suicide attempt of calling it a 'failed attempt.' Someone surviving
a life-threatening incident is never a failure.

"I don't envy reporters
for being in a position," Rowe continued. "Oftentimes, you have 250
words or less to explain why something happened. Suicide is a
complex phenomenon for multiple reasons. Trying to assign it to one
particular cause can send the wrong message to a community."

Other missteps include
media using graphic language in regard to celebrity suicides or
using images of people clutching their heads to portray depression.
However, Rowe was not there to be negative. Instead, she used
multiple examples of how the media can use positive reporting as a
method of "good suicide prevention without ever reporting on
suicide," she said, referring to this by the term "positive
narrative."

"For those who are
struggling, help is available," Rowe said. "We do stories on other
health issues. We report on diabetes or breast cancer. We tell the
stories of families and survivors, how they get through. With
suicide, because the death is traumatic or sensationalized, it
eclipses the fact that there are a lot of people in every community
living in recovery that are working hard. There are those feel-good
stories around suicide that are waiting to be told."

For Rowe, the same rules
that the media should follow can also be applied to social media
users who may make inconsiderate or even hateful commentary about
those who have committed suicide. Rowe said that, in many cases,
people are at differing cycles of grief when they respond on social
media.

"When everyone is trying
to express their pain and feeling, they come up against each
other," Rowe said. "It gets ugly. I would encourage, for the
families who are struggling, either create a 'closed group' where
they can talk to each other and share their feelings for one
another, that's not out on a public forum. Social media can be a
great way of keeping people connected, especially when they are in
different states, but not everything needs to be in public
conversation."

Rowe also suggested that
social media users experiencing negative behavior should block or
unfollow harmful individuals or avoid sites that could cause
emotional harm.

"You don't have to expose
yourself to that pain," Rowe said. "You can be very protective of
what you allow yourself to see."

Conversely, those who may
be suicide survivors or be a family member affected by suicide may
want to tell their story. While Rowe recommends always speaking
with immediate family or another personal support system, she also
said that one to two years of healing are necessary before sharing
with those outside of family or to a group.

Rowe said that one of the
most important steps in reporting these types of stories is to
place contact information for getting help, such as a national
suicide prevention hotline. She also said that, over the past few
years, guidelines on reporting have been issued in order to change
the narrative.

"I've seen it get better
over the last five years," Rowe said. "There are still some bad
examples but, as a whole, I think the media-press and
journalism-they want to do what's right for their community. They
want to get it right. They want to tell a good story."